


The Spiraling of His Bleeding Heart

by actualcoolcat



Series: Recovery comes with Relapses [2]
Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Coping, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Mentions of Death, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Spooky, Tim sees some unmentioned shit because was it even there?, mentions of the rest of the main cast - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23906611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualcoolcat/pseuds/actualcoolcat
Summary: People don't come back from the dead. Faceless, impossibly tall, all-consuming, terrifying horrors don't exist. They don't.Tim is living and trying to have a normal, happy life. Tim is living and trying to be normal. Tim is living and trying. Tim is trying. Is trying.He sees something. He breaks down.
Series: Recovery comes with Relapses [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751296
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	The Spiraling of His Bleeding Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote more Tim. 
> 
> To be continued??? Who knows. Thank you for all the kudos and enjoy.
> 
> ( check tags for appropriate tw/cw )

He takes the long way home.

He’s proud of himself for remaining composed after seeing what he ( _absolutely, impossibly, for certain a hallucination)_ —didn’t see. However, once he was far enough away, he bolted. Swerving through the neighborhood and maneuvering his way away from the _Imminent Concern_ as fast as his smoker’s lung would let him run. Once he’s back safely in his car, he checks over his shoulder, checked the backseat, locked the doors and ducked low.

He takes the long way home, off the highway, down the dirt road, passed the development complex. Once he’s at his apartment, he pulls a mini-screwdriver from the glove compartment, walks around and removes the license plate temporarily from his car just in the off chance that someone happened to see him in his car and trail him back home. Tim takes two steps at a time up the worn, moss-covered stairs leading up the stoop to his tiny apartment building.

_Click._

_Click._

_Click._

Once the third lock is secured on the door, he checks the latches on all the windows before pulling the blinds shut. _Purposefully, punctually, paranoid_. He was sure his routines went noticed by his neighbors, and he only hoped it worked as a deterrent to keep them as far away and ~~(rightfully)~~ scared of him as possible. He throws off his jacket. Doesn’t think about _(the faceless face, the porcelain, hollow stare that didn’t have any eyes_ )—anything. Doesn’t think about anything. He needed to process that for a moment before actively thinking about it. Ruminate. Right.

Left alone in the shabby, under furbished, hole in the wall he had befittingly _holed_ himself in the last few months— he starts to unravel. Hyperventilating, shaking, skin clammy from the previous exertion and panic running through him. He stands in the dim living room, with the beat-up couch, with the unplayed guitar, the glow of the microwave clock glaring at him from the attached kitchenette. He stumbles, catching himself on the wall, a ragged, dry cough wracking through his body. He chokes, gasping, body tensing with the force of the coughs, a pain shooting through his nerves as he aches. He drags himself against the wall, pulling himself into the meager bedroom. He groaned, air hitching and catching in his throat as it constricted with another fit of coughs. Tim stumbled to turn on the light, rummaging around on the night stand for the orange container of pills he kept there. He grabbed at it in all his desperation, unscrewing the cap to pour out _one, two, three, four_. He swallows the pills dry, one at a time, sinking to rest on the beige carpet. He waited until he could catch his breath, and for the coughing to stop.

Tim screws his eyes shut, counting up to ten, counting down, counting up again. He fidgets, runs his hand over the carpet, focuses on it, describes its softness and texture to himself quietly. He pulls his knees up, rests his head on them, tries to hear through the noises swirling around his head. He could hear them all in stereo, projecting around the room and bouncing off the walls right back at him. A broken sob leaves his mouth, Tim bringing his hands up to claw at the sides of his temples, hoping the physical pain would be enough to distract his senses. The static, the creaking, the groan-like noises, the whispers, the accusations and failures directed wickedly at his broken form. He sobs, muttering to himself, clawing at his faces, repeating the mantra of “no” in between coughs. _It had to pass. It had to pass. It had to pass._

\---

When it quiets down the pills have taken effect, dissolving into his bloodstream. He crawls on shaky limbs _(lead filled, exhausted extensions of himself_ ), to the connecting bathroom and promptly vomits into the toilet. He hangs his head, spits out a mouthful of blood before dragging himself under the shower head. He sits in the tub with his clothes on, lets the hot water beat down on him and soak through his bones. He hopes, absently, that it can rid him of the repugnant stench of self-loathing. That somehow, this water was blessed, holy enough to wash clean all of his transgressions.

Who was he kidding? He never did believe in God. If there was one, He wasn’t watching. There was nothing worthwhile to this pathetic shit-show of his life.

Tim lets out another ragged sob, letting the salty tears mix with the water down the drain. Alex was _wrong_. None of those deaths counted for anything. It didn’t let you stop It that easily, twisting the natural order of life just as It twisted everything else Its putrid form touched. A twinge of horror ran down his spine at what other tricks It could play, what other bad memories It can fish out of his subconscious to toy at him like a marionette on a string. Tim wasn’t prepared for that. Not for all of his past to come racing back at him, showing him that the last few years of his life were worth nothing in the end.

He sits under the shower head under the water turns cold, and then to freezing. By the time he’s shivering, Tim shuts of the water and strips off his wet clothes. He stares in the mirror at his dripping hair, at his hollow expression. Eyes were bloodshot and his facial hair was growing more unkempt in the sustained avoidance of his razor. He takes a towel and starts to scrub himself dry until his skin is an irritated pink.

\---

Outside of the bathroom now, Tim pulls a dry pair of pants up off the floor, dragging himself over to the nightstand. He takes another of the white pills for good measure, securely sealing the bottle shut and pocketing it into his jeans. He’d have to start carrying them with him everywhere again. He’d called his doctor for a refill as an additional precaution.

Sauntering out of the bedroom, his head feels a little clearer, better prepared to handle the repercussions of the day and what exactly it all meant. He pulls his pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket along with his lighter, sucking his manufactured addiction in with a long drag. He works through two cigarettes slowly before he feels ready to pull out his phone, lighting a third as he steels his nerves. He looks through the meager list of contacts in his phone. He had more at one time, back Before. He only calls two of the names anymore, his doctor and his boss. The word _[JESSICA]_ stares up at him from the blurry screen, there only for emergencies, only if things started getting worse for her. He couldn’t bring himself to completely abandon her. Right before her in his contact list, _[JAY]_ was listed, silently, ruefully, like a threat. Everyone else, Tim could delete from his phone. But Jay’s last remaining messages, voicemails… he couldn’t bring himself to purge himself of. Not yet. Not his last connections to the living Jay, to the Jay he remembered. What an idiot.

Not the time to think on the Before. Focus, Tim. Now… to compartmentalize. He’d take this one step at a time.

**One** : Tim was seeing things again. He was seeing hallucinations _(they were hallucinations, they couldn’t be real—people who died stayed dead)_ and other… Thing(s).

**Two** : If he was seeing things again, that meant he was getting bad again. If he was getting bad again, then…

**Three:** Tim was still spreading It. He’d need to make some more adjustments, limit his grocery run to once a month instead of twice, make his cigarettes last longer, ask if he can get his shift at work moved to graveyard. That should help, though there wasn’t a science to this. His whole life had been a trial and error of what worked and what didn’t.

**Four** : If his new precautions didn’t work, more people were going to die. Or get their life inevitably fucked up beyond any hope of a regular, happy, normal existence. Death would be a luxury at that point. He didn’t wish that on anyone else. Didn’t want to repeat his past mistakes.

**Five** : Tim was starting to believe It didn’t just let people die. It played with their souls, their essences, plagued everyone in contact. It twisted them in ways Tim still wasn’t completely able to comprehend. An uneasy feeling set hard in his stomach as Tim finished off his third cigarette.

Alright. That should handle the main things. Now to just come to terms with it, get over it, and move on with his boringly bland life.

… Except, it wasn’t that easy. It never was.

The emotional exhaustion his earlier outburst caused made it easier for him to think logically about these troubling facts, but it didn’t make them any easier to swallow. Nothing in his life had changed, things were possibly worse now, even. It was still out there, there was still something killing innocent people, Tim still had unanswered questions, and he was all alone this time. Thinking he could just go on like _everything was fine_ , leave the past behind him and just hope forgetting was enough to end everything didn’t work. He was the Source to all of the strife in his life, to all of the hardship his friends had faced and died for. It could never— and would never be that easy.

He looks down at his phone again, staring at his contact list. Maybe… something could be done. But, for now, he pockets the device, trudging off towards his bedroom again. Exhaustion set heavy in him, the physical, mental, and emotional stress from the day weighted him down, making each step of his feet feel like he was pulling against tar. He wasn’t in the right mind to think about this any further, not now. Eventually he makes it to his bed, collapsing face first into the pillow. He didn’t know what the best thing to do was, who to trust, what to believe. He needed to process, to mourn, to filter and dredge his emotions until they were stuck deep in his throat again, locked away in his heart.

He closed his eyes to fall into a fitful, restless sleep. He was seeing things again, but he wasn't going to let it get any worse.


End file.
